Tying a Career Together with QA: Jessica Powers’s TripleTen Story

There are countless good reasons to switch into tech — as many as there are people making that professional change. A higher paycheck, better work-life balance, and more engaging work are just the first in a long list of motivations.

But for Jessica Powers, the pivot was imperative. She was in a customer service role, a job that required her to listen to customers, and she was losing her hearing. When she looked back on her diverse professional past to see what she could transition to, she wasn’t sure where to go next. Could tech be the right path?

It was. Here’s how she discovered that tech was the linchpin her career had been missing all along.

High stakes career pivot

Jessica studied graphic design in college, and that’s the field in which she launched her professional life. In that first job, she got a taste of tech. Although she was a graphic designer, she also took on additional responsibilities because of holes in her team. “I did a lot of self-taught web design because they didn’t have a web designer,” she said. At that job, “it was kind of like, ‘Hey, while you’re looking at that, can you learn to do this as well?’” Being flexible and curious, she went for the web design tasks.

But that capability ended up costing her the role. According to Jessica, “I basically worked myself out of a job.” She’d done her tasks too well — they didn’t need her anymore. 

So she went for her first professional transition. She moved into customer service, where “you have to figure out how to make small talk, because that's how you keep people engaged.” As an introvert, it wasn’t ideal for her. Still, she didn’t shy away from her duties. “It was what I had to do, so I did it.”

Then she started losing her hearing. In a career that’s all about listening to the customer, that physical ability is crucial. So she once again needed to find a new path. It was while she was looking into what she should do next that she saw an ad for TripleTen on Facebook. Quality assurance (QA) immediately caught her eye. 

I saw the ad for TripleTen and thought, ‘Oh wait, that’s a career? People do that?’ Jessica Powers, TripleTen grad

Throughout the two previous positions, she’d been already digging into things and exploring the ins-and-outs of how to solve issues. It excited her that she could take this up as her next career. Briefly, she considered enrolling in the Software Engineering Bootcamp, but QA also stood out to her for its shorter term of study. “I was in a position that I needed to get out of, so speed was a factor in choosing QA over software engineering.”

And it’s true: the TripleTen Quality Assurance Engineering Bootcamp takes five months to complete as opposed to the Software Engineering Bootcamp’s ten.

That sold her. She enrolled.

Shaping her career keystone

Jessica kept working while she was at the bootcamp, but she didn’t find juggling the two responsibilities to be a challenge. In fact, she managed to fit studying in during her free time at her job. “If I had downtime or I was on my lunch break, I got through the reading portion, and then I would go home, and I would work on the practical portion,” she said.

During her studies, a family emergency struck. She got in touch with the TripleTen team, explained the situation, and found the flexibility she needed. “It was a huge relief to put things on pause for about a week and a half,” she said. Looking back on it, she sees how that accommodation made TripleTen stand out. 

Learning something new can be stressful, but it was probably one of the least stressful learning experiences I've ever had. Jessica Powers, TripleTen grad

Her most stressful learning experience? When she studied Meso-American art history from a textbook written by the professor giving the lectures. “Great professor,” she said with a laugh. “But you don’t want to accidentally miscite or not understand something in a class like that.”

TripleTen was much more encouraging of exploration, and when she and her fellow cohort got to the mind map section of the course, she saw this philosophy play out in the diversity of approaches her coursemates took. “I think every single one of us did the mind map slightly differently from everybody else.” She peeked at how others had organized their webs of interrelated factors, and marveled at the variety: “It all made sense, but it was so different.”

Then, as her time with the bootcamp started to come to a close, she joined the externship that revamped Synthesis Workshop’s site. It mirrored how development occurs in real-life tech situations. A team of students from the Software Engineering Bootcamp developed the site, and then it was up to Jessia and her fellow QA engineers to test it out. 

I actually feel like, for the first time in quite a while, I've found a spot like a puzzle piece that actually fits in the box. Jessica Powers, TripleTen grad

This hands-on experience working with others amplified her knowledge: “We learned a lot from each other, and I think the ability to work on a shared project with different points of view helped a lot too.”

These different points of view also naturally led to different focuses as the team began doing QA for something intimately important to Jessica. “One of our smaller team projects was accessibility, and I immediately went, ‘I want to look at the captions,’ and one of my teammates went, ‘Well, I want to look at the visual contrast between the images.’

“We individually gravitated towards the sections we chose. So we weren't really going ‘Well, I'll take this if you take that.’ It was like, ‘Well, I want to do this.’ And, ‘Oh, good, because I want to do that.’”

It helped her come to a realization: QA was always what she’d been moving towards, even in professions that seemed unrelated. “When you look at all the other things that didn't really match up, putting QA and tech into the mix makes the threads come together.”

So she had the skills, the real-world hands-on experience, and the new unifying drive. Now it was time to package these elements and start applying for new QA roles.

Tying it all together

The crucial elements that helped Jessica shape her job search strategy were the conversations she had with her career coach. “Having the career coach was super helpful, because I get distracted easily. I go, ‘Oh, I have to do this. And then I’ve got to do this.’ And all of a sudden, I'm ten tasks away from what I set out to do,” she said.

But it was more than just keeping her on track. The career coach brought modern practical wisdom to the job search. Jessica had written a resume that adhered to the traditional guidelines she’d been told — list all your positions, regardless of relevance. It made her resume three pages long. The coach told her to “see how close we can get it to one page.”

In addition, the coach gave her pep talks as she was in the process of applying for jobs. The wisdom and encouragement were just what she needed.

I think having somebody, both for guidance and for moral support, helps so much. Jessica Powers, TripleTen grad

With the coach’s assistance and the new know-how she’d mastered, she soon landed a job as a QA Specialist at Tandem Theory, a texas-based marketing firm. The externship turned out to be vital, both for the interviewing process and her new day-to-day work. 

“The way the externship team was set up was very similar to how my current team is set up. I think having that experience and being able to tell my current team about that experience during the interview process helped them go, ‘Oh yeah, that's kind of how we work, too. So that'll be a good transition,’” she said.

It’s been a complete transformation. Her tendency towards curiosity is now actively cultivated: “It's probably the first job I've ever had where I have been encouraged to ask 20 million questions. I've had previous jobs where it's like, ‘Jess, you don't need to ask why on everything.’ And then this job is, ‘Please ask us why about everything because that's how we find out what's not working.’”

In addition, thanks to modern meeting tools such as Google Meet and Zoom, she can have captions on during meetings. That means accommodation is built into her career. Much of her work is text-first anyway, but when she needs to be on a call, the tools themselves, by design, allow her to still pursue a career despite her hearing loss.

And yes, she mostly uses virtual meeting tools because she now works remotely. It’s a game changer for her. “The commute is certainly better,” she said with a smile. Other conditions are better, too. As an introvert, she was expending energy on talking with customers in her previous career. Now, she’s in a whole new setup that encourages genuine connection with her teammates. “When you have a conversation with tech people, I found it's because you actually want to and not because you feel like you're obligated to.”

But there’s one thing that’s even more valuable that she discovered by making the pivot to QA: “I actually feel like, for the first time in quite a while, I've found a spot like a puzzle piece that actually fits in the box.”

Find the path for you

Want to discover your true tech career just like Jessica did? See what profession is right for you by taking our career quiz.